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Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#31

Post by geofft »

dogruck wrote: post #20
tyingq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once a company is at Google's size, comp levels and hiring become formulaic. It would be pretty difficult to make completely objective formulas for salary. I assume it maps back to perceived performance (in the interview, or after hiring), which is always biased, conscious or not.

Ok, let's think about the compensation process. You start with the obvious -- managers assess the value of each employee. Roughly, for each employee you derive a dollar amount that is: 1. Larger than what the employee could be paid elsewhere (otherwise, the employee leaves) 2. Close to the employee's contribution to the company's bottom line. That's a rough science though. #2 is certainly harder than #1. So, next, yo…

#1 directly reflects biases from other companies, which could arise for lots of reasons. If, say, many of your male engineers are getting offers from Uber and the rest aren't comfortable applying, and Uber is giving extremely high comp to lure people away from Google, then your formulaic comp will end up with men getting consistently higher salaries.

Google is pretty opaque about how they make salary offers, but from reports on the internet plus my own experience and that of friends, it seems like they have rough comp bands within each level, and they don't really "negotiate" in the conventional sense, but they do have lots of leeway to match/exceed competing offers or your current salary if you name them before the initial offer. So if you have those offers on hand from other companies, or if you had a particularly strong current salary, you can get a much higher offer.

Also, don't forget that this lawsuit is specifically alleging that they underlevel women, not that they're directly paying women less. There are lots of easier ways for an executive to defend that, e.g., "like everyone else in the industry we'd love to hire qualified women but it's a pipeline problem" etc. etc. (The executive might even genuinely believe it.)

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#32

Post by srtjstjsj »

brad0 wrote: post #8

One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience. I joined one of the big 4 eight years into my career. Similar to her I was placed at an entry level position. When I started I saw that I had the same ability as people higher than me. I made sure that I displayed that ability to my peers and manager. And what do you know, I…

> complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience.

> You always get attacked by the very people you're trying to help.

helping how?

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#33

Post by johndoe90 »

I wonder if their skills are on the same level as the men who were paid more. And I'm curious, did they ask every single man in Google how much they get paid? Probably, there are some men who make even less than they do (or did).

Please don't consider me a sexist, but this kind of stuff is everywhere now and it's hard to tell whether it's a truth or not.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#34

Post by ransom1538 »

Flat salaries may fix this? You basically join at the same bracket publicly. No performance bonuses and all salaries increases are directly based on years put in. Everyone joins with the same options across the board. For each male hired there must be a female hired. No roles. Everyone has the same title: "Engineer". Off sites are strictly prohibited.

Is this what the lawyers want?

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#35

Post by danschumann »

Disagreeable personalities tend to get paid more. When a man is disagreeable, people usually get wide eyed, but then accept him as kind of abrasive, but lovable. Women are either less likely to be disagreeable personalities, or less liked when doing so.

If women get paid less, why doesn't google hire only women to save money?

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#36

Post by feminist17 »

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

> Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons.

I think you give companies too much credit. Those pretty good reasons are typically that that's how much they asked, it wasn't unreasonable, and they passed the interviews.

People's salaries are all over the map for the same sorts of positions, and it's not just IT and development.

But, even though it might not be a clearcut answer to whether there is discrimination or bias in salaries, it should be explored. Even data with a wide, overlapping range doesn't mean that the mean and median can't be compared and valid conclusions drawn about probable bias.

Google seems to take bias seriously, and I think if it could be proven with adequate certainty that salaries were affected by the sex of the employee alone, they'd do something about it.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#37

Post by isoskeles »

geofft wrote: post #12
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #6

> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.

Anecdotally, I spent a couple of months this summer going through team selection at Google NYC, with a specific request for back-end, low-level, preferably C++ roles (app security, build systems, etc.). I didn't meet or talk to a single woman through the entire process, with the exception of reception, another candidate, and someone who was covering for my recruiter when he was on vacation. I asked every manager I ta…

If you want to assume something insidious about Google's intentions, am I allowed assume that you just want to find a female coworker to wife?

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#38

Post by cakedoggie »

brad0 wrote: post #8

One of the women suing complained that a man was hired a level above her with the same years of experience. They both had four years experience. I joined one of the big 4 eight years into my career. Similar to her I was placed at an entry level position. When I started I saw that I had the same ability as people higher than me. I made sure that I displayed that ability to my peers and manager. And what do you know, I…

> And what do you know, I got promoted into a more suitable position.

This is a bit of a ridiculous statement. You seem to be claiming that everybody who shows off their skills rises to their correct level. I don't see it that way. I see that there are way more people capable of doing a senior position, but only a few positions are available.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#39

Post by jpatokal »

Alex3917 wrote: post #11
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #6

> Ms. Ellis, who left the company in 2014, says that almost all of the female software engineers at Google worked in front-end jobs while men worked in back-end roles. That seems both highly dubious and easy to verify.

Keep in mind that because of their scale, jobs that would be considered full stack or back end at other companies are probably considered front end at Google.

Edit: Nvm. Alex3917 defines it better than I did.

Re: Google Sued by 3 Female Ex-Employees Who Say It Pays Women Less Than Men

#40

Post by slyfocks »

stretchwithme wrote: post #25

Companies pay some employees more for pretty good reasons. I don't think they're thinking "Jim's a dude so we should pay him $50K more than Sally." No, they're paying somebody more because they don't want them to leave. And if they are paying you less than somebody else, it's probably partially because they don't think you are as much of a flight risk. And if Google is wrong about these decisions, I'd guess we'd see…

This assumes venture capitalists don’t exhibit a bias towards male founders. Depending on the extent of bias (if any), female engineers would lose a bit of bargaining power with Google.

Also, empirically, women tend to be more risk-averse than men on average, so Google (and other companies) could be paying less knowing the chance they’d leave is lower than a man of similar skill.

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